Documentary explores impact of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan on vets

Jamie Keyes remembers how different her son was when he came home from his second tour in Iraq.

"He just wasn't the same person," she said from her home in Statham, Ga. "He had had this awesome sense of humor. That was gone. He was very stoic. The fun Nathan was gone."

Former Army Spc. Nathan Keyes was drinking more, avoiding social contact, struggling with nightmares. He broke up with his wife and attempted suicide.

Those changes came to a head in St. Augustine one night in August 2008.

While driving to the movies with his girlfriend, Keyes displayed a gun to another driver and later fired several shots.

A police chase followed and Keyes was arrested.

Now about halfway into the prison term he was sentenced to back then, Keyes has become the focus of a documentary made as part of "In Their Boots," a series about the impact the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are having on people back home.

"Veterans are coming home, and so often they are changed," said Richard Ray Perez, "In Their Boots" executive producer. "A good percentage are coming home with PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] and are unable to reintegrate in their communities harmoniously."

Perez's series, which has made 22 episodes so far, hooked up with Keyes as it was looking to put a human face on the struggle some combat veterans have when they get arrested.

"We know communities all across the country are reporting waves of veterans coming into the criminal courts," he said.

Keyes' case is similar to many others in which he said his time in combat led to the charges of assault and firearm he pleaded guilty to two years ago.

The details of exactly what happened that night differ.

After spending some time under psychiatric care in Georgia, Keyes had moved to St. Augustine to stay with his grandfather. On Aug. 13, Keyes was riding in a Nissan Altima driven by his girlfriend, Kristan Mae Hundley, when he got into some sort of altercation with another driver.

The other driver told police that when he stopped behind Keyes at a red light, the veteran leaned out his window to say something, but the other driver told him not to talk.

Keyes then flashed a gun, and the other driver followed the car while calling police, the police report about the incident said. A few minutes later, the other driver said in the report, Keyes fired three shots at him.

But Keyes' mother said when Hundley stopped to let a family cross the street, the other driver got angry and began berating them and then following them. Keyes showed the gun to get the other driver to back off and when he didn't, fired three warning shots in the air, she said.

"Nathan had a flashback. His memory of what happened isn't that good, but he knows he lost control," said Jamie Keyes. "He did what he was trained to do. He fired his gun up in the air. They're trained to fire warning shots. No one was hurt."

Once Keyes was in the system, his background wasn't considered, said his mother, who has since become an outspoken advocate for training and systems that would better equip law enforcement and judges to deal with veterans.

"We got a suffering veteran here who never go the treatment he needed," she said. "The number of our boys coming back and intersecting with the criminal justice issue is becoming an epidemic. That's something your law enforcement should be trained to deal with."

Documentaries like "From War to Prison" -- the episode of "In Their Boats" focused on Keyes -- will help people push to have such training programs and knowledge, Perez said.

"The ideal scenario is people will be so inspired or impacted, they will pressure their county officials," he said.

In more perfect world, he said, people like Nathan Keyes would end up in PTSD and substance-abuse programs. Special courts known as Veterans Court -- now set up in a handful of jurisdictions across the nation -- would become more common.

"It's becoming clear to the civilian population that these people shouldn't be treated as common criminals, that they're committing crimes because of their wartime experience," the filmmaker said.

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Thank you, St Augustine Record for spreading the news about our documentary. The general public is largely ignorant of the huge sacrifices that our veterans have made for their country and need to understand what is happening to so many who have returned from war. Our government has spent billions of dollars waging two recent wars, and have not invested enough into helping our troops who come home bearing the mental and physical wounds from serving their country. We owe them a HUGE debt, and way too many of them are returning home to struggle with issues that land them in morgues and prisons all over this country. It is way more cost efficient for our society to allow them to get the treatment that they need instead of sending them to prison. Like my son, most of these soldiers have spent years serving their country at home and at war, and have had no other prior offenses, until coming home with PTSD and brain injuries. Had they not served their country, none of this would have happened to them. For every veteran who suffers, cries out for help, and falls through the cracks in the system, ending up in prison, there is a whole family that suffers. What kind of statement are we making to our future recruits, when they see how our soldiers are not being taken care of by their country when they return home. I certainly hope that Judge Wendy Berger sees this article and our documentary and considers a veteran's court in St. Augustine. Mark my word, my son will not be the only poor veteran who comes through her courts bearing the wounds of war. Thank you, Nathan for putting all of your pain and suffering out there for the whole world to see, so that society will get the message and rally our country to help the next veterans who come home and suffer the way you have. From the confines of your prison cell you have already done so much to help the veterans who follow in your footsteps. I will always be proud of you and know that when you get out of your confinement hell, and finally get the treatment that you have been crying out for, you will go on to do great things! You always have!